Bad

During an exceptionally severe winter, with very heavy snowfall and strong winds, with some snowdrifts reported to be in excess of 10 feet high a crushing avalanche came down off the downs near where the current Cuifail Tunnel is destroying a row of cottages and killing 8 inhabitants.

7 survivors were dug out (the white dress worn by a survivor when she was rescued, Fanny Boakes, is on display in Anne of Cleves House in Lewes).

Some years later a public house called The Snowdrop was built on the site and it is still there.

Why was this the worst avalanche on record in the UK? Because no other avalanche to date has destroyed buildings.

Mad, bad and dangerous to know, Christiana Edmunds, an attractive and intelligent Brighton lady found a way of getting rid of any one in her way!

She carefully injected the poison strychnine into chocolate cream. She did this to bid a certain farewell to the wives of the married men she desired. Six prominent Brighton ladies met their maker through eating these laced sweets in this agonising way.

When suspected by the doctor that she had become obsesses with she tried to prove her innocence to him by randomly poisoning quite a number of other people in Brighton. She bribed children to buy chocolates which she then poisoned, and sent them back to the chocolate maker under some pretext. Maynard’s, the confectionery shop, got a damaged reputation to say the least! A poor 4 year old died, which which she then used hoping that Mr Maynard would get arrested. However, the court case resulted in a verdict of accidental death which infuriated her as she had strongly testified specifically to get him arrested. So annoyed was she that she set out on a campaign of poisonous terror amongst many of the towns worthies.

What was her final down fall – a reward for the real culprit to the deaths! The Chemist recalled all her purchases of strychnine, the children she had bribed to go and buy the poison for her, … they all came forward wanting a reward!

Clever detective investigation found her and she was sentenced to the gallows showing no remorse whatsoever. However, she claimed she was pregnant to avoid the hangmans rope (for clemency was given to pregnant ladies until they had given birth in those days) and in the meantime she was declared every name under the sun from mad to evil, you name it.

She ended her days as the most celebrated patient in Broadmoor for the criminally insane. A woman’s unbridled lust was most un-Victorian and hence her fame!